Random letter generator

The 20-sided letter die that comes with Scattergories has no Q, U, V, X, Y or Z on it. The reason is practical. A round asks every player to find a word for a dozen categories, all starting with the same letter, and for most of those six letters the answers run out fast. Try “a fruit beginning with X” or “a country beginning with Q” and the round stalls, with one player holding the only answer anybody could think of.

The Party game preset reproduces that die: twenty letters, each with the same chance. Combined with No repeats, it gives you exactly twenty rounds before any letter comes back, the same as working through every face of the physical die once.

Not every table wants the easy version. Experienced players often keep the hard letters in and allow a pass, because the rare letters are where the memorable answers come from: Uruguay, Zanzibar, xylophone, quince. The letter grid lets you settle on your house rules exactly, rather than accepting one fixed set. A common middle ground is to remove only X and Z, and keep Q, U, V and Y as tough rounds.

Initial letters are not the same as letter frequency

The chart above shows how often each letter appears in running English text, where E dominates. What matters for a category game is different: how many words start with the letter. S, C and P open far more English words than E does, which is why an S round feels easy and an E round, despite E being the most common letter overall, is harder than people expect. The rare initial letters, X and Z most of all, are rare on both measures.

Draw gives you between two and twelve different letters in one go. Some uses:

• Longest word. Draw seven or eight letters and give everyone a minute to make the longest word they can from them. Each letter can be used once. Draws never contain the same letter twice, so “BOOK” is out unless the rules allow reusing letters.
• Vowel and consonant mixes. A draw made entirely of consonants is hard to build words from. Set the Vowels preset and draw two or three, then switch to Consonants and draw the rest. The British TV show Countdown builds its letter rounds in a similar way, with players choosing between a vowel and a consonant for each tile.
• Initials. Draw two or three letters as the initials of a character, a band or a made-up company, and invent the name.
• Acrostics. Draw five letters and write a five-line poem where each line starts with the next letter.

Each draw is recorded as a single line in the history, letters separated by spaces, so a full game can be exported and checked afterwards.

Weighted letters, like Scrabble tiles

This generator gives every letter on the wheel the same chance. Scrabble does not: the English set has 100 tiles, including twelve Es and nine each of A and I, but only one each of J, K, Q, X and Z, plus two blanks. If you want draws that mimic a tile bag, type the letters into the wheel spinner with each letter repeated as many times as it has tiles. Each line is one wedge, so the odds follow the tile counts.

A phone and a random letter are enough for a dozen games. A few that work for mixed ages:

• Categories round. Spin a letter, then go round the group naming things in one category that start with it: animals beginning with B, countries beginning with M. Anyone who repeats an answer or takes more than five seconds is out for the round.
• Alphabet journey. “I went on a journey and took…” with each player adding an item that starts with a freshly spun letter and repeating the whole list so far.
• Three-letter stories. Draw three letters. Each player has thirty seconds to tell a one-sentence story whose first three words start with those letters, in order.
• Number plates. Draw two letters and race to find a car whose plate contains both. In countries where plates are mostly digits, use shop signs instead.

For a category game with ready-made categories, pair this page with the random category generator, which draws categories by difficulty so the letter and the category can both be left to chance.

A letter wheel is one of the most adaptable five-minute activities there is. A few that work well with this tool’s settings:

• Letter of the day. One spin at registration. Children find objects in the room, names in the class and words in their reading book that start with it. Use No repeats across the term so every letter gets a day.
• Upper and lower case matching. Spin in ABC and ask for the lowercase form, or the reverse. Switching case does not change the round, so you can flip between them mid-game.
• Short vowel sounds. Choose Vowels and lowercase, spin, and ask for a consonant-vowel-consonant word with that sound in the middle: c_t, p_n, h_t, d_g, b_s.
• Spelling warm-ups. Spin a letter and a category and ask for the longest word that fits both. Older students can be limited to words with a given number of syllables.
• Fair turn-taking. Spin for the first letter of a first name to choose who answers next. Remove letters nobody in the class has, so the wheel never lands on an empty result.

On an interactive whiteboard, the large letter grid is easy to tap. Everything runs in the browser, so it works on school devices that cannot install software, and nothing is stored or sent anywhere.